A million children who missed out on getting the MMR vaccine in England are being targeted in a campaign to raise the level of protection against measles after an outbreak in Wales. 2013 is set to be the worst year for measles outbreaks in 20 years
Children at private schools face the greatest risk from the measles outbreak and could pose a health threat to the rest of the population, a leading doctor has warned.
Professor John Ashton said Britain's 600,000 privately-educated children were at much greater risk of infection than those in the state sector.
Prof Ashton said a mix of large numbers of middle-class children who were not vaccinated against measles following the Wakefield scare in the 1990s, along with pupils from overseas with unknown health records, meant schools could become "reservoirs of disease", the Daily Telegraph said.
He said the risk was similar to that from groups such as gypsies and travellers, who have previously spread the disease.
Prof Ashton, who will soon become president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: "You've got a lot of middle-class, well-off parents, large numbers of whom did not have their children immunised because of the Wakefield scare - which was a very middle-class phenomenon.
"Layered on top of that you have got a lot of children from abroad, especially from the Far East, from countries such as Hong Kong and China, and there are few checks being done to establish their immunisation records."
2013 is expected to be the worst year for measles in the UK for the past two decades. Read more about the illness and how it is treated.
15 cases of measles have been recorded in the East Midlands in the first three months of this year.
13 cases of measles have been recorded in the West Midlands in the first three months of this year.